


This Would Be a Lot Easier if It Were Completely Different

by greyathena



Series: Back-to-Back-verse [1]
Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-22
Updated: 2015-01-22
Packaged: 2018-03-08 13:57:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3211670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greyathena/pseuds/greyathena
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Spoilers for all of season one) Even the real world has alternate timelines, but they're only in our heads. Jake thinks about Eve, and Cassandra, and Flynn. He and Flynn find all conversations are made easier by drinking. Tiniest bit of Eve/Jake if you squint and turn the screen upside down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Would Be a Lot Easier if It Were Completely Different

**Author's Note:**

> I have been noodling on a long Librarians fic, and this is what won't sort of fit into that framework. So think of it as an outtake/preview, maybe.

Eve had rushed them out the front door, looking like a harried denmother as she tried to keep Cassandra and Ezekiel from touching anything on the way out. Cassandra was practically skipping backwards, torn between her desire to stare back into the Library and not wanting to take her eyes off Eve, despite the fact that the older woman looked tired, but basically fine.

"Go home and go to bed," Eve said sternly as Jake closed the Annex door behind all of them.

"You're the one who . . . died," Ezekiel protested, his facial expression looking mildly more sensitive than his comment sounded. "Or didn't die. Kind of died."

"Yes," Eve agreed. "I have had a much longer day than the rest of you, and _I_ want to go to bed without worrying that someone is going to blow themselves up. You can be unsupervised in the Library after Flynn tells you what's safe."

(What she had actually said earlier was, "Nobody goes off on their own until Flynn gives us the safety briefing," and then looked at him expectantly. 

"Right," he'd said, backing into a shelf. "Uh - don't touch anything. At all." Off Eve's skeptical look he'd added, "And listen to your Guardian at all times."

Eve's eyebrow had continued to lift until he'd relented. "And . . . I will give you the real safety briefing tomorrow. After I develop it." He'd seemed unappeased by Eve's sunny smile.)

Jake had walked Eve all the way to her car, no more willing to let her out of his sight than Cassandra had been. He kept a hand at the small of her back, although he suspected his license to do this would expire in the morning. For now, her warmth was going a little way toward erasing the feel of her pulse fading under his fingers.

She gave him an odd, indecipherable smile before finally turning her back to climb into the car, but he held on to the door for a moment.

"Look," he said, focusing on the floor mat instead of her face, "we don't know how - I mean - if you don't feel right, you know, at all. You call us. Call me, I drive the fastest."

"I - believe that." She tilted her head into his line of vision until he looked back at her. "And I will. I swear."

He stood there for a few moments after she drove off, before getting into his rickety truck. (If Eve actually called him in the middle of the night to say she couldn't breathe or had started bleeding from the chest - he'd probably steal his neighbor's car). He actually did drive home and park outside his rented apartment, but just sat there for a while before starting the truck again.

The bar he'd found the first week was closer to the Annex than to his place, and it definitely would have been more efficient to just go there first. But at least this way he felt he'd obeyed _some_ of Eve's instructions.

It wasn't exactly like the bars back home - not that he expected mechanical bulls in Portland, but some recognizable music rather than this stuff that sounded like the inside of an acid trip would have been nice. Still, it was dark and close and anonymous and sort of grimy, so, good enough.

Until he actually recognized someone, and the anonymous part pretty much went out the window. Given a split second to choose between running and awkward socializing, he chose to go over and take the empty chair at Flynn's table.

"You were still in the Library when I left," he commented as he sat down.

"I must be a better navigator than you."

Jake signaled to the bartender and pointed to Flynn's full glass.

"You don't even know what it is," Flynn pointed out. Jake leaned over and sniffed the glass, and Flynn prodded him away. "Stop sniffing my drink."

His words were not quite slurred. Jake raised an eyebrow as a drink appeared before him (rye, surprisingly). "How the hell have you had time to get drunk?" he asked.

Flynn took such a deep breath that it looked as if he might be trying to just snort the rye. "I'm not drunk," he said on the exhale. "Just - really, _really_ long day. I don't even remember most of it, but I can tell it was a really long day."

"Yeah." Since it wasn't exactly like the bars back home, Jake let himself make a face at the burn of the rye. Stuff must have been 200 proof. "Eve tell you what happened? I mean . . . before you guys came back?"

"Yup. It's - it's a story."

Jake made himself count to ten. "You guys gonna fill the rest of us in?"

"Tomorrow," Flynn said after staring at the table for a while. Then he laughed, abruptly, in the act of taking a drink and this time nearly did snort the rye. "After the safety briefing."

Jake laughed along with him. "Yeah, she's bizarrely invested in us not dying."

"Feeling seems to be mutual."

"Yeah. Yeah." Throwing back the rest of the rye seemed like the best way to banish that image of Eve's blood . . . _everywhere_. "That Bathsheba stuff is good."

"If it had been a second later . . ."

"Let's not." Jake stood up quickly. "You want another one? I'm going up and get something less awful."

"Another one of these is fine, I think my tongue is numb."

The trip to the bar and back was long enough for him to decide to ask his question. "So - that stuff. It does diseases too, or . . . ?"

"Well, it -" Flynn stopped in the act of reaching for the new glass of rye. "Oh. No. No. I'm sorry, I'm really sorry, but I don't think so."

"What would happen if she tried?"

"Probably nothing." Flynn shrugged. "So why not try, you'll say."

"Yeah?"

"I wouldn't want to get her hopes up."

"What if we just, like, mix some in her tea?"

"And then what, take her to the hospital for a spontaneous CT scan?"

"Maybe not." The bourbon in Jake's glass was already half gone. "Maybe just wait and see."

Flynn nodded. "So," he said.

"So."

"You got girl problems."

"I guess."

"Little redheaded girl problems."

Jake snorted. "You make me sound like Charlie Brown."

"Well, you know there's the football and the . . . I don't actually know where I was going with that." Flynn's gentle smile softened his words. "You tend to go for the hopeless cases?"

It was a different clench than the one he'd felt when he'd seen Eve with a bloody hole in her shirt - sick rather than urgent - but his gut clenched all the same. "I guess." The drink, or Eve's back under his hand earlier, made him stumble on to say, "It woulda been -"

"What?" Flynn asked after waiting a minute for him to decide to finish.

Jake gave him an apologetic smile. "Woulda been a lot easier - smarter, you know - if I could have fallen for Eve. Obviously, in this scenario, you're gay."

Flynn raised his eyebrows as he swallowed a hit of rye. "Thank you for not killing me off, I guess."

"No problem." They sat in silence for a while before Jake added, "Is that some kind of offense? I mean that I say I _didn't_ fall for her -"

"We can't all fall for everybody who's great," Flynn pointed out. He was beginning to sound less not-drunk. "That would be a mess."

"It would at that. I just wish - sometimes, I wish we could choose."

"Yup."

"And that you were gay."

"Gonna start to think you're hitting on me." A long pause ensued, during which Flynn stared off into space. Out of nowhere, he mused, "Jenkins is so not my type."

When Jake had stopped choking, he said, "Hey, he's a dashing man."

"You know, I want to -" Flynn stopped, opened his mouth, closed it again, and repeated, before finally saying, "I just want to say - you know, Eve, she's - her own person. I mean I don't want you to think that _I_ think that I have some kind of claim, or -"

"No, man, no. I just, you know, I see you guys together. I assumed it was . . ."

"It's not official. Or anything. Actually, it's not anything. Really. I mean not - out loud."

Jake drained his bourbon. "Well," he said. "Three hours ago we all watched her come within a hair of dying. You got a second chance, you better use it."

" _Yeah_." Flynn frowned deeply. "Should I have gone home with her?"

"What - 'you almost died, so let's have sex'? You wanna role-play how that goes?"

"No, no. Not that. Just . . . right. I am going to do something about it. Not tonight. Or - I should text her? Yes. I will text her tonight, and then tomorrow - do something else."

Jake lifted his hand - he could tell they were going to need another round. "Yeah. This is a brilliant plan."


End file.
